Campus Leonardo - Building 20
June 19th, 2023
5.30 pm
Contacts:
Nicola Gatti
Research Line:
Artificial intelligence and robotics
The Worldwide Health Organization (WHO) reported that mental health conditions have increased by 13% in the last decade. One of WHO’s main goals is to improve the mental health of individuals and society at large. This includes the promotion of mental well-being, the prevention of mental issues, and efforts to increase access to quality mental health care. However, those objectives are still not accomplished in our society because of the wide gap between those who require care and those who have access to it. Various research works in social robotics and human-robot interaction suggest that robots can be used as novel tools to help assess and promote mental well-being in people by offering affordable and accessible mental health services.
In this talk, I will present the various studies we have been conducting at the Cambridge Affective Intelligence and Robotics Lab to explore how robots can help in the assessment and promotion of mental well-being in adults and children. More specifically, I will provide both quantitative and qualitative results and findings from (i) an empirical study to aid the evaluation of mental well-being in children, (ii) three participatory design studies for designing robotic coaches to promote mental well-being, (iii) one wizard-of-oz study where a robot delivered meditation sessions over multiple weeks, and (iv) two empirical studies in real world settings where robots aimed to promote mental well-being by delivering various practices over multiple weeks. My hope is that these findings will inform and help the HRI community in designing and developing new adaptive robots that can help people assess, maintain and improve their mental well-being.
AI Seminars are a series of talks to foster the study of artificial intelligence in Milan.
An aperitif will be served after the seminar.
